Political

August 22, 2014

People who are disgusted by gun violence get peeved by gun nuts' finicky insistence on the correct use of terminology like "automatic" versus "semi-automatic." The gun nuts are just trying to derail the conversation and delegitimize the people who are disgusted. They're not acting in good faith. Booman says:

I don't remember a mass shooting incident in this country where fully automatic weapons were used. I haven't studied them all, and maybe there have been some examples of people using fully automatic weapons to murder people. But certainly the most recent and notorious examples in this country have involved semiautomatic weapons.

That's right; the number of crimes committed with fully automatic weapons today is probably zero; even in the heyday of the Thompson submachine gun, when you could buy one at your local hardware store, the number of crimes committed with machine guns were vanishingly small.

One of the solutions that people who are disgusted with gun violence like are assault weapons bans. Here's where the problem of distinctions come in. "Assault weapon" was a gun-industry marketing term coined in the 1980s when gun makers decided to dress up their plain-vanilla semi-automatic rifles and pistols to look like military weapons by painting them black and adding things like pistol grips and flash hiders. These "assault weapons" look scary, and they're meant to, because the target market wants to own a mean-looking killing device to make themselves feel powerful and dangerous. And it's no wonder then that that the people who go on shooting rampages are also attracted to these guns, for the same reason.

Functionally, however, an "assault weapon" is indistinguishable from any plain-vanilla semi-automatic gun. So gun nuts have a point when they say assault weapons bans make no sense. Banning cosmetic features like foregrips and pistol grips and flash hiders doesn't make the gun less lethal. One of Booman's commenters makes the same point by quoting a member of Congress on West Wing who thinks the proposed legislation is stupid:

No, this is for show. I think it's an unconscionable waste of the taxpayer's money to have it printed, signed and photocopied, to say nothing of enforced. No, I want the guns, Leo. You write a law that can save some lives. I'll sign it.

So, assault weapons bans are for show. The gun nuts know this. People who aren't gun nuts but are familiar with guns know it. And people who know how guns work also know that the only way to reduce gun violence is to confiscate semi-automatic weapons. There are just too many guns out there already for a ban on new guns to have any effect.

But the public at large is not in favor of confiscation. The vast majority of gun owners are not military fetishists carressing "external death penises" and the vast majority of weapons are not used in crimes. Most people who own guns do so because it's part of their culture; they own guns for the same reason they drive a certain kind of car, wear certain kinds of clothes, and even vote for a particular political party. These non-crazy people regard the idea that their guns should be confiscated because of mass shootings the same way a car owner would consider the idea that she should lose her car because someone else intentionally caused a massive, fatal traffic accident.

If you want to make a real reduction in gun violence, you have to start a multi-decade program to make guns culturally unacceptable. It's going to be a long road and you have to make it clear where you are trying to end up. Acknowledging that that is your goal and explaining why it's a goal that people should get behind is the best way to begin.

May 28, 2013

In response to Britain and France lifting the embargo on arming the Syrian rebels, Russia has announced it's going ahead with selling a very potent anti-aircraft system to the Syrian government. This probably means no U.S. intervention:

Russia will deliver an advanced air defense system to the Syrian government despite Western opposition because it will help deter "hotheads" who back foreign intervention, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday. ...

The S-300s can intercept manned aircraft and guided missiles and their delivery would improve Assad's government's chances of holding out in Damascus.

It ranges 125 miles a shot; and can shoot down missiles as well as fighter planes. However unenthusiastic the U.S. military is about a no-fly zone right now, confronting the S-300 would make it instantly worried about losing many, many pilots. “This is a system that scares every Western air force,” Lexington Institute defense analyst Dan Goure once remarked.

The U.S. obviously prefers to use airpower instead of ground forces because, usually, America can establish complete air superiority, virtually eliminating the chance of taking casualties. The S-300 would make that impossible. Manned fighters and bombers, drones, and cruise missiles would all be vulnerable, even if they were attacking targets in Syria while operating outside of its airspace. Combine that with the fact that Russia recently gave Assad sophisticated anti-ship missiles which can hit targets over 180 miles away, and it means the U.S. will not want to risk its carriers in the Mediterranean.

If the idea on the part of Britain and France was to arm the rebels while they and the U.S. provided air cover, they will have to think again.

This is all of a piece with Assad's apparent strategy of taking every opportunity to show the West that he has the upper hand. He crossed the so-called "red line" by using chemical weapons, and when nothing happened, he started using them more. Sen. McCain made a brief trip into the country to meet with rebel leaders, and it's obvious McCain - one of the "hotheads" Russia is talking about - will bang the war drum for American intervention by citing chemical weapons use when he gets back. Assad's spokesmen have been constantly referring to the rebels as terrorists and "al Qaeda" and playing up atrocities - like a rebel posting video of himself eating a human heart - to drive down Western public support for intervention.

January 12, 2013

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Saturday it will not produce platinum coins as a way of generating $1 trillion in revenue and avoiding a battle in Congress over raising the U.S. debt ceiling.

I've never looked into the relevant statutes and cases, so I have no idea about the legality of minting the coin. I assume it's a "political question" that a federal court is likely to avoid deciding.

I didn't embrace the idea for two reasons: First, while posing little economic risk by itself, I was afraid Republicans would engage in unpredictably irrational behavior in response to the coin that would wreak catastrophic damage. The logical response to the minting of the coin is lifting the debt ceiling to repurchase it. But the national GOP is controlled largely by a group of nutters who do not care what the consequences of their actions are.

Second, if minting the coin had worked, I think it would have just punted on the very important issue that the national GOP is controlled largely by a group of nutters who do not care what the consequences of their actions are. A showdown over the debt ceiling focuses the public's attention on that. Every time the issue comes to a head, the GOP gets more unpopular. I think the President has noticed that.

I think some people rightly fear that negotiating with the GOP over the debt ceiling risks giving things away that we shouldn't. But I look at it like this: If I am negotiating with a hostage-taker, I am willing to send in some pizza and soda, so long as no one I care about gets shot in the end. If Obama gives them some symbolic victory, like the fiscally meaningless estate tax deal that just went down a couple of weeks ago, I'm fine with it.

January 06, 2013

My opinion is that the only thing that could bring down the rate of gun violence - either in mass murders or the regular kind - is to reduce the number of guns in the country from the current 300 million to ... something drastically lower. How would you do that? Ban the sale of new guns and confiscate existing ones. There really is no other way; guns are just inherently dangerous items, like cars, and after you do what you can to reduce unlawful and unsafe use, there is an irreducible lump of risk. Leaving aside the pesky Second Amendment roadblock that the current Supreme Court has created for us, let's think about the political and cultural issues involved in such an effort.

First, you have to line up enough political support to get Congress to pass the necessary legislation. The NRA aside, about 45% of Americans own at least one gun. The vast majority of them probably feel like they are not the problem, and don't want to give up their weapons. On the other hand, you have a fairly small group of people who would be full-tilt in favor of outlawing guns, with everyone else maybe vaguely supporting it. The gun owners and manufacturers would be highly mobilized and motivated, while the pro-ban forces would have to be self-funded and constantly reminding wavering allies why it was so important to do this.

Let's say you overcome that obstacle and get the votes necessary to pass a gun ban and confiscation law. What's the mechanism for identifying and confiscating the guns going to be? As many people don't know, the ATF doesn't have a database of gun owners. Individual gun shops are required to maintain records, but this law will put them out of business, so I doubt all of them will be able to "find" the records you would need to track down the original buyers of guns they have sold. You're going to need to hire a lot more cops and investigators.

What are the penalties for violating the law going to be? You have to think about how many people are going to become criminals solely by operation of your new law. If 120 million people own guns right now, how many would resist turning in their weapons? You'd probably have some measure of voluntary compliance. But largely I imagine you'd have to go find the guns and take them by force. What percentage of those incidents will end well? Probably, almost all of them, but the ones which don't ... you get the picture.

I did leave the Second Amendment to one side, but what about the Fifth Amendment? Confiscating guns is a Taking which requires compensation. How would you determine how much each individual gun seized is worth? What would be the procedure for paying the former owner? How much money are we talking about?

The picture I am trying to paint here is a parallel to the various kinds of prohibition America has tried in the past. Obviously, there are significant differences between guns on one hand and alcohol and drugs on the other - including the fact that it's harder to make your own guns than it is to distill spirits or make drugs. But the same problems come into play. Creating a black market for guns will have unforeseeable consequences. The value of an individual gun will skyrocket. Smuggling will be rampant. And while it is hard to make a gun, it is not impossible.

November 20, 2012

Profiled here. Interesting read. Impossible to tell how much of it is true or accurate, of course. They're fucking geniuses, especially in retrospect. Of course.

A couple of points:

They are all dudes. You could weave a fucking rug with all the facial hair. Why are they all dudes? What happens to women coders who try to get in the door? Maybe they get laughed at or subtly discouraged. Maybe it's a toxic atmosphere.

The article claims the tech guys didn't start out as politically engaged but ended up that way in mid-'12. They had built this great machine to do something, and that was to win an election, and then they became afraid of losing. "[L]osing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded." No mention of a single issue they cared about, so I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt. These guys make bank. Politics does not touch their lives except for things like net neutrality. Suddenly they're politically energized? No, probably, they're suddenly aware they won't be profiled in The Atlantic if they lose.

Whatever. I don't give a shit whether the people working for us actually share our goals so long as their incentives are lined up with ours.

November 08, 2012

Four years ago, I was heavily involved in the Obama campaign in Philadelphia as a volunteer. I registered a lot of people to vote. And I was a slacker compared to many of the people who volunteered with me. I was just one set of hands among thousands in Philly. Even more impressive were the field organizers who were often in their first (woefully-underpaid) campaign job and who were inspiring, smart, and seemingly indefatigable.

This year, every single person I volunteered with last time did it again. And the junior field organizers from last time were now senior people. How many tens or hundreds of thousands of people across the country are now veteran Democratic operatives? These people all have experience in both winning ('08 and '12) and losing ('10) cycles. They know how it works. Some of them will go on to run for office themselves. All of them will probably be involved in political activism for life and will bring up their families in the same tradition.

If I were a Republican, that would scare me a lot more than demographics.

People talking about demographics have the wrong end of the stick. White conservatives don't vote for white conservative candidates because they're white, they vote for them because white supremacy is at the core of American conservatism. So long as Republicans continue to embrace distrust and fear of non-white people and of women, they will continue to lose those constituencies. It's possible conservatives can change (although I don't see how), so this problem is fixable. And I hope they do fix it, because we'd all be better off if the Confederacy finally accepted defeat.

It's not a question of liberalism being complex, it's a question of so many liberals not really believing in equality, justice, etc. , that the actual substance of liberalism is worth the effort of fighting for and risking any real personal sacrifice for. That's how liberalism has died.

Talk about "the flattering lie". If there is one, it's that things would be going great if everyone else were as principled and morally good as you.

The problem with Carol's argument is that she's talking about rhetoric, not politics. Rhetoric is essential but not sufficient for effective politics. Rhetoric is about getting people to think what you want them to think. Politics is about getting people to do what you want them to do. We've seen time and again that people who agree with many liberal ideas and policies in general still vote for conservative politicians. That's because conservatives can make their politics simple, while liberals can't.

Consider the following:

Free-market capitalism is the source of all wealth. Anything that interferes with the free market reduces wealth and therefore all regulation of business:

should be carefully crafted to avoid undue interference with the market.

should be designed to avoid market failures by promoting dissemination of information, reducing barriers to entry, and countering anti-competitive practices.

is evil and should be repealed.

Contrast that with:

The concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of people creates a bias in the political system which caters to the interests of those people and undermines the principles of liberty and equality on which the country was founded. Therefore, as a nation we should:

create laws and policies to mitigate the concentration of wealth by placing the greatest share of the cost of government on the wealthy using progressive taxation.

kill the rich, take their money, and distribute it to the poor.

I think the point is self-evident: Almost no liberals answering the second question would choose the third answer or vote for politicians who took that position. A majority of conservatives answering the first question would do both. Conservative politics are simple and liberal politics are not.

Liberals value fairness, conservatives value power. A message of power is always easier to sell than fairness. As someone wrote:

World's run by fear, you see. Can't sell pipe dreams, can't rule with charity, no good at all. Not in the real world. Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life.

Conservatives have built a narrative of virtuous strength versus degenerative weakness that is cohesive and, again, simple, and marketed it relentlessly. Liberals could not concoct and peddle such a simplistic story. Again, we value fairness while the other side does not. We refuse to sell what we wouldn't buy; conservative leaders do it every day. A liberal will never be able to appeal to a voter's baser instincts and remain a liberal; a conservative will never be able to appeal to a voter's better instincts and remain a conservative. But it's easier to appeal to the baser instincts, and that's not flattery or a lie.

April 27, 2011

releasing Obama's long-form birth certificate won't quiet the crazies. I would guess the Administration thinks so, too, and thinks the GOP presidential candidates will have to continue to cater to them. The media will consider the settled matter really, really settled, and make fun of Trump, et. al. if they continue to insinuate the contrary.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 212 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

February 08, 2011

We're a week away from when candidates for office can begin circulating petitions to get on the ballot. If you have a preferred candidate, you might consider volunteering as a petition circulator for them. If you don't, prepare to be asked to sign. Remember, you can only sign as many petitions as there are open seats for a particular office. (For example, there are 10 City Council district seats, and 7 at-large seats, so you can sign only one petition for your district candidate but up to 7 petitions for at-large candidates.)

Thanks to everyone who made it out to last Sunday's range outing with Shooting Liberally Philly. We'll be doing it again in March.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 212 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

February 02, 2011

Oh look, the Egyptian military allowed a popular uprising to continue long enough to force the current leader out while installing a successor just as or even more friendly to them, thereby confirming to everyone in sight that they are the ones in charge. Yippee, democracy!

January 26, 2011

For the past several weeks, I've been hearing Obama would announce plans to cut Social Security in the State of the Union speech and that I should join with the Jane Hamshers of the Left to prevent it. Well, it didn't happen, which proves ... what?

It proves that a bunch of anti-Obama Dems are opportunistic motherfuckers who are just positioning themselves to make bank in the next couple of years. And people who believe their bullshit are fucking fools.

January 25, 2011

President Obama is preparing to nominate a White House deputy counsel and prominent litigator, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., to be solicitor general of the United States, the White House confirmed on Monday. The position has been vacant since Elena Kagan became a Supreme Court associate justice last year.

Why is this move "pro-business"?

A specialist in First Amendment, telecommunications and intellectual property law, he played a role in several important cases about copyright law in the Internet era – including representing the music industry in a 2005 lawsuit against the file-sharing service Grokster, and Viacom in a 2007 case against Google.

So Verrilli helped the music industry destroy P2P, and most recently was trying to destroy Google and YouTube on their behalf, too.

On the plus side, he's clerked for Brennan and is good on First Amendment issues. But Solicitor General is a stepping stone to the Court, and I would hate to see this corporate lackey on the Court.

January 20, 2011

When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat in Palm Springs later this month, he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of “notable leaders” like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court.

A leading liberal group is now trying to use that connection to argue that Mr. Scalia and Mr. Thomas should disqualify themselves from hearing campaign finance cases because they may be biased toward Mr. Koch, a billionaire who has been a major player in financing conservative causes.

The group, Common Cause, filed a petition with the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate potential conflicts by Justices Scalia and Thomas and move for their disqualification from the landmark Citizens United case ... .

On June 8, 2008 more than 1,800 ACLU members, staffers and volunteers flooded in to Washington D.C. to attend the ACLU’s annual membership conference. ...

We got to hear from both clients and the people leading the charge in such diverse fields as Privacy, LGBT issues, Capitol Punishment, Affirmative Action and a whole score of other issues. ...

We also had such stand out guests as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and featured speakers like Arianna Huffington, Senator Arlen Specter, Helen Thomas and Kal Penn among others.

The Common Cause letter to Holder argues that a reasonable person would question Scalia's and Thomas' impartiality in the Citizens United case because (a) their attendance at the Koch retreat was highlighted in the invitation, (b) the Koch retreats are "highly political" and designed to garner support for a particular political course of action, (c) the retreats are secretive and proceedings are unpublished, (c) Koch was the moving force behind Citizens United, which was pending during the retreat Scalia and Thomas attended, and (d) "[r]egardless of the timeframe, we believe it is inappropriate for a Supreme Court judge to be 'featured' at or attend closed-door strategy meetings with political donors, corporate CEOs, candidates and political officials, and thereby lend the prestige of their position to the political goals of that event." The letter separately argues that Justice Thomas' wife's involvement with a conservative political group also is grounds for his disqualification from the Citizens United decision.

I believe that Scalia and Thomas are not "impartial" in any meaningful sense. They are movement conservatives whose jurisprudence is deeply slanted to reach their preferred politicals outcomes and occasionally is totally unprincipled. But if attending a meeting of like-minded people who are actively involved in pursuing political goals disqualifies a Supreme Court Justice from hearing a case, then Ruth Bader Ginsberg should be disqualified from hearing every ACLU case that comes before the Court. (She doesn't just attend their meetings and speak to their staff and donors, she used to work at the ACLU as the head of the Women's Rights Project!)

Important appellate judges have legal ideologies. People want to hear from appellate judges whose views they agree with. Absent the appearance that the judge is receiving some kind of specific, tangible benefit from an interested party to a case, then I think that these kind of celebrity appearances are relatively harmless.

December 08, 2010

Update: The answer is "yes" per Mr. Williams at the Tax Policy Center via email:

Low-income workers will pay more tax in 2011 than in 2010, all else the same. Everyone else would see their taxes drop.

The tables we have posted on the TPC website do not include tax provisions from the 2009 stimulus bill in the baseline so the tax changes shown don't consider the fact that people are getting MWP this year. We will post a new table shortly that compares MWP and the payroll tax cut directly--that will show the winners and losers from the effective swap of one provision for the other.

In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale — individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,000. ...

Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.

“It will come to a few dollars a week,” said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, “but it is an increase.”

The lead-up to that quote gives the impression that net overall taxes on lower-earning taxpayers will go up under the compromise. And some people have run with that interpretation:

No worries! Poor people don't create jobs, anyway, I hear.

But if you re-read the quote from Prof. Williams at the Tax Policy Center, you'll see it only addresses the change in payroll taxes, not all the elements of the compromise. I went to the Tax Policy Center's website and found this analysis of selected elements of the compromise, including the payroll tax changes:

On that table, everyone gets an overall tax cut. (Although look at the way those making over $500,000 and over $1,000,000 make out! Those are some very happy Republicans.)

I think this means that people making under $20/$40k might have a tax hike of "a few dollars a week" on employment taxes, but get a larger tax cut from all of the other elements of the deal. If that's right, then the New York Times overinterpreted Prof. Williams remark about one aspect of the compromise and reported that the working poor are getting screwed.

And people who are invested in the narrative that this deal is a sellout by Obama ran with it. Welcome to campaign 2012!

December 05, 2010

Now that attempts to limit the tax cut extension to incomes under $1 million, Dems in Congress have two options: Vote to extend them all, or let them all expire.

If they extend them all, then they look weak and "progressives" will heap scorn on them all, including the "AWOL Obamabush".

If they let them all expire, Republicans have vowed to filibuster everything else of substance through the end of the term. So nothing else gets done from now to Xmas. And then Republicans will claim that Democrats raised taxes on everyone, and make a big deal out of re-passing the "Republican tax cuts" next term. And so the threat to let them all expire is empty; not a threat at all, but an opportunity for the GOP.

December 04, 2010

Insist on tax cuts first, running out the clock a good bit, then demand that amendments be allowed, and then let the others do the dirty work with thousands of amendments and procedural stalling. But David Broder will be impressed with how reasonable you are!

This should also manage to eat up enough of the legislative clock that we can dismiss START and unemployment benefits extension and anything else. But hey- rich folks will get a tax cut!

December 03, 2010

Electoral competence is what led me to support him in 2008. Starting with Super Tuesday, Hillary increasingly looked to me like she was going to lose to McCain, and Obama looked like he was going to win. (Before that, I thought Hillary was a lock for the nomination.) There wasn't a whole lot of daylight between them policy-wise, and neither were especially liberal. I was tired of losing, so I went with the candidate who I thought would win.

I also thought that it didn't matter whether we had the first black President or the first woman President, what was more important to the world was having a competent President. I hoped Obama would be as adroit at governing as he was at campaigning. That's not working out so well. But where we'd be if we had gotten Hillary instead (assuming Hillary could have beaten McCain) is, as he says, unknowable.

But I do know I'm glad John McCain is not President. And that Sarah Palin is not Vice President. It's knowable that things would be worse if they were in the White House.

Agreed?

A similar choice is going to come up in 2012. I think primarying Obama would be a disaster. But it still might happen. Whether he wins the primary or not, in November there will be a Democrat and a Republican. And the Republican will be, relatively speaking, far worse for the country.

So I expect whoever the Dems put up, I am going to support and work for. I wish it can be with some enthusiasm and optimism, as in 2008. But I am going to do it regardless, because it's the only responsible thing to do.

November 12, 2010

Islam is suddenly on trial in a booming Nashville suburb, where opponents of a new mosque have spent six days in court trying to link it to what they claim is a conspiracy to take over America by imposing restrictive religious rule.

The hearing is supposed to be about whether Rutherford County officials violated Tennessee's open meetings law when they approved the mosque's site plan.

Instead, plaintiff's attorney Joe Brandon Jr. has used it as a forum to question whether the world's second-biggest faith even qualifies as a religion, and to push a theory that American Muslims want to replace the Constitution with extremist Islamic law. "Do you want to know about a direct connection between the Islamic Center and Shariah law, a.k.a. terrorism?" Brandon asked one witness in a typical line of questioning.

...

At one point, he asked whether Rutherford County Commissioner Gary Farley supported hanging a whip in his house as a warning to his wife and then beating her with it, something Brandon claimed was part of "Shariah religion."

The commissioner protested that he would never beat his wife.

County attorney Jim Cope objected to the question, saying, "This is a circus."

The magistrate conducting the trial is allowing all of this prejudicial, irrelevant testimony in because -- the article speculates -- there is no jury and the judge has the power to simply strike irrelevant evidence in the end and rule based on the relevant facts. If this is true, he's giving the plaintiffs leeway to prove their case so they can't even plausibly claim they haven't had their day in court.

The less-cheerful scenario is that the magistrate really believes the testimony of Frank Gaffney that "Shariah, and by extension the new mosque, poses a threat to America" is actually relevant.

Concerns over the loyalty of ethnic Japanese seemed to stem as much from racial prejudice than evidence of actual malfeasance. Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Command, each questioned Japanese American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress,

I don't want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.

DeWitt also sought approval to conduct search and seizure operations aimed at preventing alien Japanese from making radio transmissions to Japanese ships. The Justice Department declined, stating that there was no probable cause to support DeWitt's assertion, as the FBI concluded that there was no security threat. On January 2, the Joint Immigration Committee of the California Legislature sent a manifesto to California newspapers which attacked "the ethnic Japanese," whom it alleged were "totally unassimilable." This manifesto further argued that all people of Japanese heritage were loyal subjects of the Emperor of Japan; Japanese language schools, furthermore, according to the manifesto, were bastions of racism which advanced doctrines of Japanese racial superiority.

[Citations omitted.] So strong was the belief that people of Japanese descent were inherently disloyal, that infants in orphanages who had even "one drop of Japanese blood" were sent to orphanages in the concentration camps.

It's all there: The "we're not racists, they are", the Juan Williams-level belief that "they" are inherently disloyal and unassimilable, the equivalent of "Madrassa" hysteria, the eliminationist rhetoric. The people who hate and fear American Muslims today are the direct inheritors of those who hated and feared Japanese Americans.

There are some Democrats who want to primary Obama. They're angry because they think he's a wimp. I think it's stupid and a little retrograde to evaluate political performance by the "toughness" yardstick, but to each their own.

A serious primary challenge would almost guarantee a Republican victory. Not only would it deplete the overall Democratic warchest (pitiful to begin with) but it would produce an extraordinary amount of rancor that would put Carter v. Kennedy in the shade. And even if the Democrat (whether Obama or a successful challenger) won the general election, the ideological outcome probably won't make white liberals any happier and might conceivably make them even more unhappy.

You see, President Obama is black. And any challenger (who? no one says) will likely be white. And black voters always, always make up the margin of victory for Democrats in the general election, at least since 1964. Black voters today overwhelmingly support Obama - 91%. This compares to 79% of Democrats and 75% of liberals.

In short, white Democrats -- especially white liberals -- are turning on the first black President and black Democrats like him a lot.

This tells me that in a serious primary challenge, black Democrats will come out in droves to support him and a white challenger will tend to appeal to white Democratic voters, some of whom will be liberals but in general will be more conservative than the average, because there are more moderate to conservative white Democrats than there are white liberal Democrats.

In terms of racial politics, it will be worse than Hillary v. Barack. The animosity generated will make it very hard for the survivor -- I hesitate to use the word "winner" in this scenario -- to unify the party and go on to win.

In terms of substance, it means Obama is more likely to be successfully primaried by a white candidate who is as liberal or less liberal than he is. And that means that Obama will have to compete for those white moderate to conservative Democratic voters -- ultimately causing him to stay where he is ideologically or move even further right. In the end, no matter who wins, we'll end up with a President that's either no more liberal or more conservative, maybe way more conservative if it's the Republican, than we have in Obama now.

Obama denies that he's caving on extending the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000. This won't end the hyperventilating over things Axelrod said. Nothing will, unless Obama actually beheads John Boehner with a katana on live TV.

I'm not that concerned with a temporary extension of the tax cuts on everyone. The Republicans oppose that because it would just put them into a dilemma in 2012. That fight would crowd out whatever other obstructionist grandstanding they want to do that year and it might be really unpopular if the economy has improved. Also, it is true that there is some anti-stimulative effect to raising even rich people's taxes, although there are way, way better ways of spending all that money (like, say, directly hiring the unemployed to do stuff we need done. Just a thought.) So, I'm roughly indifferent to the outcome if the choice is repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy or extend them one or two years. The unacceptable outcome is extending them indefinitely or for more than two years.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of people breathing rapidly into paper bags.

November 05, 2010

In 2009, police stopped 253,333 pedestrians, 72 percent of whom were African American, the suit said. Only 8 percent of the stops led to an arrest, often for "criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop," according to the suit.

The population of Philly is about equally black and white, so do the math. The ACLU and local civil rights attorney David Rudovsky have brought a class-action lawsuit. One of the named plaintiffs is a African-American lawyer who has been frisked four times since 2008.

Nutter and police commissioner Ramsey credit stop-and-frisk for reducing violent crime in Philly. But crime rates across all categories in the U.S. have fallen since 2007, so color me unconvinced.

November 02, 2010

Thus far into Obama's presidency, the Republicans have done very well by being obstructionist. Obama extends his hand and offers to work together, and they both slap it aside and call him divisive. Congressional Democrats adapt Republican ideas like cap and trade and the public option and the Republicans scream Nazi socialism. They haven't had a single positive idea, and for them that's a good thing. A positive plan would just confuse their supporters.

So, when the Republicans win the House, they will just continue to do what they've been doing: Demonize and demagogue. Their primary mission will be to rail against the evils of the health insurance reform bill and make loud announcements about how they're going to slay it. There will be lots of talk about making tax cuts for very, very wealthy people permanent in order to help "small business." No matter what happens, they will never let DADT be repealed on their watch. Etc.

But to help further their cause, they'll do what the GOP always does: Sling mud. I don't think even they are dumb enough to try to impeach Obama himself, but there will be lots of talk about it. There will be inquiry upon hearing upon outraged press conference, spiced up with calls for independent counsel investigations. They pull a Breitbart and find some plausibly bad-seeming thing and use it to force some hapless official out of his or her job. Then they'll bay at the moon, lick the blood from their chops, and lope off in search of another victim.

November 01, 2010

September 25, 2010

In regard to Susie Madrak confronting David Axelrod on a conference call with the charge of "hippie punching", Booman:

[U]sing the term 'punching hippies' to mean nothing more than pushback
against criticism is inappropriate. It's not punching a hippie to say
it's retarded to spend money on defeating Blanche Lincoln. It's
punching a hippie to dismiss those of us who think we should get the
hell out of Afghanistan. It's not punching a hippie to say that the
'professional left' needs to grow up. It's punching a hippie to dismiss
our views on indefinite detention and extraordinary rendition. At
least, that's how I see it. I can take criticism and disagreement, even
on things I care passionately about. I don't expect the Democratic
Establishment to govern from the progressive left, or agree with
everything we do. But when it comes to issues of national security and
civil liberties, we've been right every time. It's about time people
started listening to us instead of calling us a bunch of dirty fucking
hippies.

The resentment that some liberal bloggers have toward Obama is partly emotionalism. Everyone wants to feel important and appreciated, and the administration hasn't praised liberal bloggers. There is no good reason it should. I think Booman and Madrak would agree, this is not about our feelings.

But many of the people who object to "hippie punching" aren't in it for a pat on the head and an "attaboy." They think it's wrong for Obama to engage in Clintonian triangulation that portrays liberals as extremists. From my viewpoint, it's all about results. I felt the same way about Obama's kumbayah schtick in the 2008 election. By nature, I am pugnacious. I look at the Republicans and what they stand for and my first thought is to bloody their noses (rhetorically). So why would I support someone like Obama, who patiently and doggedly avoided any kind of elbow-throwing? Because it worked. He pulled away after Super Tuesday during the primaries and then crafted a message (and a ground game) that McCain couldn't beat.

I think that many liberals detest "hippie punching" because they think it doesn't work. Duncan, for example, sees the problem as being that the administration doesn't use triangulation to create a space for liberal policy goals. He's happy to ignore being used as a foil so long as there's a payoff. And as Madrak says, it's hard to get people fired up (ready to go!) when they're being portrayed as extreme:

We’d just listened to a lengthy plea by Axelrod to help with the
mid-terms by motivating our readers to close the enthusiasm gap. I asked
him (not unreasonably) how he expected us to do that when the
administration keeps attacking them.

That's fair. But I've long been skeptical that liberal blogs have any real significance. By my estimate, only about 500,000 people read liberal political blogs on a regular basis. Those 500,000 are engaged and informed and don't need firing up. So, in terms of effectiveness, not getting a significant chunk of the "netroots" enthusiastic about the elections may not have much impact. What's important is the enthusiasm level of the Democratic base voters who don't read blogs. And, according to Public Policy Polling, the unhappy Democrats are the ones who are most determined to vote:

What these numbers suggest to me is that Democrats staying home aren't
necessarily disappointed with how things have gone so far. The
Democrats not voting are more pleased with how Obama's done than the
Democrats who are voting. And
when you're happy you simply don't have the sense of urgency about going
out and voting to make something change. That complacency, more than
the Republicans, is Democrats' strongest foe this year.

If this is true, it's unsurprising and contradicts the narrative that the Democrats are in trouble because they haven't delivered what the Democratic base wants. The 2008 election was a huge emotional event for many Democrats. Finally wresting control of the White House from the GOP and electing the first African-American President were enormously important. After such a big kill, people wouldn't be human if they didn't sleep. And most people don't remain engaged on a day-to-day basis outside of elections, and they seem to be just coasting. It's not clear to me how hippie-punching has contributed to that. It's even possible that some of those Democrats are happy with Obama potraying himself (and, by extension, them) as not extreme.

Bottom line on substance: This is probably much ado about nothing. I don't care about being used as a foil; I only care about results. I am not thrilled with the results so far, although there have been a string of many small and a few large wins. But I think that the hippie-punching is irrelevant or has a small, intangible effect on these outcomes.

One thing that does bother me about this: In challenging Axelrod, Madrak claimed to speak on behalf of liberal bloggers who supported Obama:

[H]ere we are, liberal activists who give money and GOTV, and the White
House needs to punch us in public so no one thinks they take us
seriously?

The problem with this is that Susie Madrak didn't give money to Obama or do GOTV for him. She's part of a Democratic faction that supported Hillary and opposed Obama in the primaries and nursed a grievance afterward. I think these are people who became invested in the idea that Obama was supported by sexist Democrats who were insufficiently liberal, and that Hillary would be the better standard-bearer. (I think that's naive at best; if Hillary had beaten McCain - I think she'd have lost in the end - there is a good chance she'd be governing in a similar fashion as Obama. It was the Clintons who used triangulation in the first place, after all.) As a result, they're reflexively critical of him. But maybe I am wrong about that. In any event, there is nothing wrong with members of a faction promoting themselves and their views. But to the extent that Madrak's representing herself and her criticism as coming from the very people who worked hard to elect Obama, it's a con job. She didn't want him to be the candidate and she held her nose to vote for him. I am one of the people who gave money and registered voters and traveled to work other state primaries and did GOTV and poll watching, and Susie Madrak does not speak for me.

F.B.I. agents executed search warrants Friday in Minneapolis and Chicago in connection to an investigation of support of terror organizations.

The searches in Minneapolis took place early in the morning at the homes of people who have helped organize demonstrations against the war in Iraq and protests held two years ago during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

“It is rather patently political,” said Ted Dooley, a lawyer who represents Mick Kelly, a food service worker at the University of Minnesota and one of those whose homes was searched. “My client denies any wrongdoing.”

They kicked in Kelly's door at 7 a.m.

The warrant said agents were gathering evidence related to people “providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support” to terrorist organizations, and listed Hezbollah, the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Kelly was also handed a grand jury subpoena duces tecum for October 19th, directing him to "bring along pictures or videos related to any trip to Colombia, Jordan,
Syria, the Palestinian territories or Israel, as well as correspondence
with anyone in those places."

September 03, 2010

Democrat Joe Sestak has often been criticized by conservatives for signing onto a letter to President Obama, in which lawmakers asked him to press Israel to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip and allow more humanitarian aid during the most recent war there.

Even some Democrats in the Jewish community told he made a mistake and, we’re told, Sestak privately conceded he should have drafted his own, more carefully worded letter. Well, Sestak has now taken that sentiment public.

Earlier this week, the two-term congressman and candidate for Senate was talking to Jewish leaders during an Orthodox Union event. ... [Sestak said] during the event that he regrets signing onto the so-called “Gaza 54″ letter and should have written his own. ... [T]hat small concession might not seem like much. But it’s an important step if Sestak wants to keep a firm hold on the suburban Jewish constituency that Republican Pat Toomey is hoping to wrest away from the Democratic fold.

In the same post, Tim Kaine is quoted as saying there were between 500,000 and a million first time voters in Pennsylvania who voted for Obama in 2008. The DNC is targeting those voters this fall. On average, of those who vote for the first time in a presidential election, only 41% vote in the immediately following congressional election. The goal in PA is to increase that by 8%. If we do that, we win statewide. The appeal to these voters is that the President, who they were so supportive of in 2008, is asking them to come out and support Sestak and Onorato.

September 02, 2010

Blue Cross just notified me that, because of the new law, my annual prescription drug coverage is now unlimited! Yay.

This also means my co-pay on a 90-day supply of brand name drugs is going from $60 to 50% of the cost, up to a cap of $500 per med per refill. So instead of paying $120 for two of the maintenance (blood pressure/cholesterol) drugs I take, I will be paying $273.24. That's an extra $613 per year. Boo.

Following Obama's speech on Tuesday, which I think was designed to set the table, Tim Kaine will start the messaging next Thursday:

Democratic National Committee chairman will look to frame
the looming midterm elections on his party’s terms in Philadelphia next
week, delivering what’s being billed as a major speech at the University
of Pennsylvania.

A party official told pa2010.com that Kaine will give the speech Wednesday at Houston Hall. Gov. Ed Rendell will be in attendance. ...

Kaine’s appearance will come just days
after his visit to southeast Pennsylvania this week. Party leaders have
also planned back-to-back appearances by Kaine and Vice President Joe
Biden on “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” respectively

Kaine will preview his Wednesday speech on the morning shows that day. I expect his main line of attack will be to equate Congressional Republicans with the Tea Party and George W. Bush. Kaine is in Philly today to raise money for House candidate Manan Trivedi, who is running against Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania's 6th district,

September 01, 2010

I thought he did a good job last night. Implicit or explicit messages conveyed:

The Iraq War was a stupid idea, I always said so, and I've managed to stem most of the bleeding (physically and fiscally) by withdrawing most of the troops.

Once we went into Iraq, though, we became committed to spending enough blood and treasure to achieve some sort of long-term stability - which is why there are 50,000 troops still there, why "advisors" will stay long after the remaining troops come home next year, and incidentally another reason why getting into stupid wars is a bad idea. As badly as the war damaged our credibility around the world, the only way to make it worse would be to appear to walk out on the Iraqis before they can effectively govern themselves again.

I called George W. Bush to tell him I had cleaned up his mess. He has his heart in the right place, I guess, but he's one dumb motherfucker, isn't he? It's good to have someone who thinks before he acts in the Oval Office, isn't it? Imagine what would be happening if the Maverick were sitting in this chair instead of me.

The Iraqis have to stand up and take responsibility for their security now. This is one of the many ways W. was dumb: He let himself fall into the Vietnam trap of effectively putting the entire burden on U.S. forces and allowing the locals to jockey for power and line their pockets.

I'm not as dumb as W., so I am not going to let the Afghan government continue to behave like a bunch of juvenile kleptocrats forever. I committed to "winning" the war against Al Qaeda there during the campaign, so politically I am obligated to keep troops running around chasing the few remaining bad guys. The lefties and paleoconservatives who want us out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by yesterday should grow up. But here's a loud, unambiguous message to Karzai and those who would replace him: You better get your shit together.

Thousands of our troops were killed and the tens of thousands injured, and 1.5 million served in Iraq who might suffer from PTSD and have other problems. It's immoral that W. played with their lives so frivolously and I will not compound his fecklessness by letting them suffer needlessly now most of the fighting is done. As a country, we owe them a huge debt we will pay in medical care and a modern G.I. bill.

The troops' suffering and the financial cost of the war are more excellent reasons why we shouldn't get into stupid wars of choice. We really could have used that money here at home. Now we've freed up a few resources, I can make noises about focusing all my efforts on the economy. Whether I know what to do about it or not, and whether people like Larry Summers have their heads up their asses or not, I have to convince the mass of voters that we are doing something to get them jobs. The Democrats in Congress better get their shit together and help with this, or else we're all getting our asses kicked in November.

There's this insane idea running around that I'm a foreign-born Muslim. So I'm going to give this speech from the Oval Office with a flag lapel pin on, and say corny things to make myself look and sound as American as possible. Our troops are heroes, just like my white grandfather who fought in World War II, just like the men who fought in every other American war, all heroes! America is the leader of the free world. Our troops are the steel in the ship of state. They are guiding us through the night with the light from above. God bless us, every one! Goodnight, and I am not a Muslim.

August 17, 2010

I've stopped reading political news and blogs. It's depressing, unenlightening, infuriating, and boring in turns. I'm volunteering to do GOTV for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate and governor races, but I don't give a shit about national politics or any discussion thereof. The older I get, the more I believe all I can do is affect what happens in a smaller and smaller circumscribed space.

July 19, 2010

[B]eginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not
just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which
they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.

The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means
businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year.

Right
now, the IRS Form 1099 is used to document income for individual
workers other than wages and salaries. Freelancers receive them each
year from their clients, and businesses issue them to the independent
contractors they hire.

But under the new rules, if a
freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they'll have to
send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local
distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year
tallying up their purchases.

What possible connection does this have to health care? It turns out, it's just budgetary. Requiring the issuance of 1099s by all businesses to virtually everyone it buys from is supposed to (a) deter businesses from expensing things that aren't really deductible and (b) help catch people and businesses which are underreporting income. This allowed an increased revenue projection that would offset part of the cost of the bill.

As I said, this is insane. The bookkeeping requirements alone are impossible. Tracking expenditures by vendor is just beyond the ability of most small businesses, not to mention getting and recording taxpayer ID numbers. Can you imagine? "Who was that guy we hired to paint the outside of the building? I can't remember. Wasn't he somebody's cousin?"

If this isn't repealed, the net result is that hundreds of millions of additional tax documents will be generated every year. As far as I know, even that number might be understated. This means that before filing a tax return, every business will have to wait for their 1099s to come in from every business customer - even if they don't anticipate a 1099 from a particular person because they didn't know they were buying for a business purpose!

The example of a coffeeshop is illustrative. If I buy coffee for clients throughout the year and expense it, eventually I will get over $600. I have to issue a 1099 to Starbucks?? Apparently so. Okay, so it's February and I need the taxpayer ID number and corporate mailing address from the coffeeshop. Right now, in a 1099 situation, you have the payee complete a form giving you that info, and it isn't onerous because it's rare. Is every Starbucks going to have that info posted in the window now? Because remember, I have to repeat this process with every vendor, and every vendor has to provide the information to every customer.

I can't just rely on the name of the place to determine whether I have to issue a 1099. Some restaurants are owned by franchisees, others owned by the franchisor. If I go to 19 different places with the same name on the door throughout the year, I'd have to figure out which are owned by whom to determine if they get a 1099! And businesses change hands all the time. What if the taxpayer ID number changes during the middle of the year because the place got sold? Assume I spent $400 there when it was owned by the first company and another $400 when it was owned by the second. Total expenditures for the year at that place are over $600, but the corporate identity of the vendor has changed. Issue a 1099 or not? Also, the first company has gone out of business. What's the point?

Either businesses will spend thousands of dollars dealing with this crap or they will just ignore the whole thing and pray they don't get caught. I don't know what's worse. Of course, if any small business with a decent amount of income doesn't file thousands of 1099s, the IRS will immediately suspect something is up. It's like the Form 27B/6 from Brazil.

Instead of blanketing the country in paper, if you need to raise revenue to pay for the law, then do it some other way.

July 01, 2010

Zoe Strauss, professional photographer and one of the best people in the world, is trying to fund a trip to the Gulf of Mexico to record what's going on. She went down after Hurricane Katrina and this is what the Whitney had to say:

Some images verge on abstraction— a tangle
of twisted window blinds in one shot occupies the whole field of the
picture— but most bluntly document the damage wrought on humans and
buildings. Volunteers pass bottles of water in a bucket brigade; piles
of ruined belongings surround a leveled home; and the golden arches of a
McDonald's sign are bent almost beyond recognition. Strauss has a keen
sense of urban semiotics: a graffitied warning on a shuttered warehouse
declares "Looters will be shot!" while the high-contrast gridded facade
of an anodyne apartment building bears the poignant handwritten message
"Mom Were [sic] OK."

June 29, 2010

I guess this means there will never be another Turkish ambassador to Israel:

Turkey will not appoint a new ambassador to Israel unless the Israeli government formally apologizes for the killing of nine Turkish citizens, including one who also had American citizenship, who were aboard a boat that tried unsuccessfully in May to breach the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, a Turkish senior Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday. The Turkish government is also demanding compensation for relatives of the dead and the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the Israeli military operation against the flotilla that tried to run the blockade.

A friend of mine who lives in the town of North Smithfield, Rhode Island, alerted me to this:

The North Smithfield Public Library is slated to close its doors on July
1, 2010 if the town budget is passed as proposed.

If the library closes, residents of the town who wish to use a library will have to travel to a neighboring town and pay a fee of $112 per year.

North Smithfield has about 11,500 residents in about 4,000 households. The total budget for 2009-2010 was $34 million. It allocated $342,100 to running the library, of which $61,000 came from the state. Even if the state cut its share to zero, that's still only $85.53 per household for the year to keep open a resource which gives kids a place to go after school and during the summer, allows seniors access to reading material they couldn't otherwise afford, and allows the unemployed to use the internet and print resources to find work.

This town would give up on having a public library in order to cut less than 1% of their budget. It's stupid and shortsighted, and it's probably happening all over the country.

At the June 28, 2010 Special Meeting of the North Smithfield
Town Council #savenspl, the five-member Council unanimously approved
level funding for the North Smithfield Public Library for Fiscal year
2011 -- thus protecting the library's State Grant-in Aid and allowing
NSPL to continue operations for the next fiscal year.

June 25, 2010

Some of you have emailed us concerning a political attack video by the
Meg Whitman campaign for California governor which features a screenshot
of FAIL Blog attacking the other candidate Jerry Brown. We want to make
it VERY clear that FAIL Blog nor the Cheezburger Network had any
involvement or knowledge of the Whitman campaign use of a screenshot of
FAIL Blog. In fact, the screenshot portrayed in the video never existed
because the Whitman campaign faked the content within the screenshot.
FAIL Blog or the Cheezburger Network has never been involved in any
endorsement of any candidate or political party and do not plan to do
so.

Regulars: Bring a Friend and Help Us Grow Drinking Liberally
Philly
We consistently turn out 15-25 every week to DL Center City at Jose
Pistola's. It's a great venue and a great crowd, but it would be even
better if we could entice some new people to join us. We're asking all
of the regulars to invite at least one new person to come out on Tuesday
nights. Word of mouth is the best way to build anything, so please help
us out! Also, we've run ads for Drinking Liberally on the back page of
the City Paper. Those are being funded by donations from generous DL
members. We'll see if they have any result before trying it again.

Send In Your Event Suggestions
Forward any area events for the week to the Philly DL organizer
by Sunday to have them included in the weekly email.

About UsDrinking Liberally is a
project of Living Liberally, a
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community
through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally
has 326 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia
chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every
Tuesday night since.

So he has formalized the city's state of emergency until
Wednesday, when he expects the full City Council will agree to extend
restrictions for 30 more days.

The starkly worded mayoral proclamation says "No person
without a legitimate reason is allowed on any public street or in any
other public place" between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

No more than three people can gather without obtaining a city permit.

I am unfamiliar with the loophole in the Constitution which grants municipal officials the authority to forbid people from being on the streets at certain times of the day or from gathering in groups of four or more.

Unfortunately, I doubt the ACLU or any other civil liberties group will challenge this on its face, given the politics of public safety. Perhaps if a sympathetic plaintiff is arrested by the Chester police, then they'll decide it's safe to represent that person and knock the "proclamation" out that way.